More spending means a more robust economy and an increase in hiring, and more money in consumers' pockets usually leads to a bump in spending. Around and around it goes. Theoretically, the good vibrations leave few untouched.

The improving economic climate may offer a chance for us to get right with our finances—both paying down debt, and addressing our skewed, and often sinful, views of money.

Freedom to spend as we desire—as often, as much, on whatever—is one of the blessings of a free-market economy, we Americans say. Problems emerge, though, with distortion. Greed scoops up more money than it is needed. Stinginess refuses to share. Prodigal spending thinks of only the here and now, and often ...

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